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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) John, last time I made a statement in the Podcast, and that statement someone picked up on and it kind of exploded it back to me. It’s real interesting when somebody hears your message better than you do, and it enables you to hear it on a different level. But the thing I said was, you make your choice when you present your desires to God. And she was able to really get to the core of her life by that statement, because she got to her desires. Well it came back to me to explode, and I have been realizing that you choose based on what you want. We all only choose what we want. And so the Lord works in our lives to cause us to want the right thing, if we will. Do you have anything to say about that? (Laughter) So, I know that God only answers you if you have enough desire. He says ask for what you want; ask for whatever you want, and He will give it to you. But the problem is sometimes what we ask for we don’t really want. He will often withhold a thing until we have a desire level that will enable Him to fulfill it. He wants us to deal with Him according to desire. Desire is always a shifting of values and preferences, it’s always looking at things and choosing what you want most of all. The choices come out of desire. You don’t make a choice apart from something you want. You choose always for what you want, in behalf of what you want.
(J) You want to know why?
(M) Yes, do you know why?
(J) Because He only responds to us out of desire for us, He’s asking for a reciprocal. And He wants our desire because He has such desire. And I experienced that tonight, and I saw that tonight, His desire for you. And I saw His passion for you, and He wants your desire and passion back, He wants a reciprocal. Though He doesn’t want you to initiate. He does want you to reciprocate.
(M) Wow. So He is the initiator of our desire.
(J) He initiates it, but then because He has such passion, because He is passion; He is the only passion, He is the only desire. So because He has such desire, He has need of us to respond to that desire.
(M) Yeah, I was going to go into passion, because beyond desire is passion. He has often brought to me the Syrophoenician woman that wanted very desperately her daughter to be delivered of a demon. But He seemed to withhold it because He wanted her desire raised to the level so that He could fulfill it. But I think John that desire is faith.
(J) Was is He wanting her desire raised to the level of His desire to do it?
(M) Ahhhhh. Yes, brilliant.
(J) When I first became a Christian I was offended by that, of course we’re all offended by the Word; and I was offended by that, I said how could You do that to her?
(M) As desperate as she was.
(J) Yeah, really, yeah. And then all of a sudden I see, because of what you’ve taught, maybe He’s raising her desire level to His desire level to perform what He wanted to perform.
(M) Incredible, that’s incredible. I think you have it, come on.
(J) No, I just see that, and that to me speaks more of the gospel of life and truth because He always wants our desire level to rise to His desire level. But I mean you know His desire is so much beyond ours. I can’t explain it, because we’ll never come to His desire. His passions are, He is passion, so how could we ever come to the level of His passion. But He lets our passions rise to a certain point that they could meet His. You know like the Michael Angelo with God reaching down with this extended arm, and then Adam just has this kind of limp hand kind of reaching up it. But he did rise to the level that he could touch it. So her level of passion all of a sudden could touch His extreme of passion to perform it.
(M) Wow. Well I’m thinking of one of my favorite passages, which is where Jesus said, to what will I compare you, you’re like children in the market place. I sang for you and you didn’t dance, I played the dirge for you and you didn’t mourn. He wants a response of passion. And Christianity requires, "religious Christianity" requires that you be steady with no passion. Our scorn for Peter was really for his passion. And yet Jesus always commended it and praised it. Even Peter’s passion to die for Jesus when he thought he could, the Lord did not condemn that, he just said you will see. So I’m seeing how if your choice is taken from you, and if you give it, you die to your desires. That’s the murder that takes place when you’re volition is run over, or taken from you, or if you give it, because we have to give it. You see you give up your choice because you want something. Everything is about what you want. God just works in your life to show you what it is that you want that’s killing you, and to show you what He wants you to want. And that’s where you make your choice, and that’s where you change your choice. You only give your volition away because you want something more than you want your freedom.
(J) So did He bring the Syrophoenician woman to a level of desperation that her passion and desire would be raised up to where His desire was to meet that child’s need? Is it usually desperation that we get to the point that we really do want God?
(M) He wants everything; He wants the dirge of desperation, He wants the dance of the song, He wants everything alive in us humanly that He’s put in us. And the main thing He’s put in us is desire. And that has to be moved to desire Him. And He will use disaster to cause you to want what He wants you to want. And as you’re saying, and brilliantly, what He wants is to be able to give to you to the degree that He has it to give. And that’s fantastic. See, when a person takes control of your volition and makes your choices for you, or negates or scorns your choices, what happens is, “hope deferred makes the heart sick”. It kills your personal desires. And so then your have no choice, when you lose your desire. And then sometimes John, I believe the Lord sovereignly allows you to be assaulted in your volition to cause you to want something different than to give up your life.
(J) Can you give me a ‘for instance’?
(M) Well Israel. Israel wanted to be free of Egypt. But in order to have the crying out, the desperate crying out, their burden was increased and their suffering was magnified. Then they cried out to the level that God wanted to supply. To me that’s one huge picture of it. There’s a desperation cry that humanly we don’t want to go to. There’s a need for God, for liberty that we don’t want to go there; it is such pain and agony. But He will orchestrate it if you’ve ever given Him your desire for Him. He will orchestrate it so that that desire level is put in the crucible until you’re willing to say ‘let me have You, and let me be free to follow You’, or whatever cry it amounts to. You can become so sick of losing your choice that you at last kind of ‘rend your garments’ and cry out to Him to set you free. He evokes desire so that you will make the choice. He can’t touch your choice, that’s yours. But He can put you where you want what He wants you to want. Because He answers, I believe He answers only to desire.
This week I was asking the Lord something, to give me a word, I don’t remember exactly what it was about. But He took me to the parable of the unjust judge. Remember where He says ‘pray, don’t give up praying’? And He tells about the parable of the widow who cried out for justice day and night. And the parable says the judge was evil, but because of her persistence he gave her what she wanted. And how much more will your heavenly Father answer you, and quickly. But then He made this statement, “Nevertheless when the Son of Man returns to the earth, will He find faith?” Well I’ve always puzzled over that statement being put in that parable, it’s an obvious paradox. And I’ve never understood that statement in connection to the unjust judge, and to the widow crying out for justice. I’ve never understood, what is the relationship. And suddenly I saw it. He was saying to me, ok, there are two alternatives. You have a choice here. He always brings a choice. And I wasn’t even aware that it was a choice as such. It was a choice of values. What He was saying was, yes, if you want justice on this earth, which I’m kind of half scared of you know. I want mercy for me. If you want justice on this earth, and you really want that, and you cry out day and night, you really desire that, I’ll give it to you. But when the Son of Man returns to the earth, will He find faith? And I suddenly saw the difference. Justice is in this life. Faith is that God is going to ultimately have all justice. And you can have justice on this earth if that’s what you really, really cry out for night and day. Or you can please God by having faith in who He is, the ultimate Judge.
(J) So that statement gave you an either or?
(M) Yes, it was temporal or eternal, which do you want Martha? The eternal reward is for faith; the temporal reward is justice among people, justice on earth. And just very quietly I thought, ‘I want faith’, rather than justice; given a choice, given the alternative. He was saying, I’ll give you justice on earth if that’s what you really, really want. You see I’ve seen Him give people what they want, when they want the wrong thing. I have seen Him do that. It’s a marvel to me that you do have what you desire from God. Sometimes it’s not what you counted on.
(J) I’ve never seen that parable as being ‘either, or’; that’s amazing. I’ve never seen it as choose what you really want, justice here, or justice there. That’s incredible.
(M) Yes, and I had asked Him that question for years. I didn’t understand the relationship of that statement, nevertheless, the Father will give you justice quickly, nevertheless when the Son of Man returns to the earth will He find faith? Well faith says I believe God whether I have justice or injustice. I don’t need justice to prove to me who God is. And very quietly I think I made the choice. Very just silently with the Lord I thought, oh no, I’d really rather the Son of God find me in faith, rather than in justice. And just without any fanfare, I just sort of made that choice between the two. And within just twenty-four hours He gave me a revelation that produced a faith for me, an explosive revelation of Himself, that I realized that if I could believe that I could be in prison in joy. It was a faith that transcended the earth He gave me in response to my choice. Is that clear enough? From what He spoke to me, which I won’t give away right now, He spoke something to me that exploded in faith and confidence that He was able to keep me in perfect bliss and peace, no matter the circumstances. And it was only later that I realized the connection between that small, seemingly small choice between the temporal and the eternal. Then He responded to give me the faith I chose. Isn’t that fantastic? So what I chose, He gave. If I had chosen justice, He would have given that justice quickly, as He gave the faith. And I’m deeply impacted by the fact that He is able, He did it for Paul, Paul wrote from Philippians, and was in prison but didn’t mention it particularly except that he said his chains were for Christ. That’s about all he said. He wasn’t interested in the fact that he was in prison; he was interested in the church.
(J) He really was.
(M) He cared about the condition of the church. He cared about continuing to feed the church. He was rich in prison. And he was seemingly rather indifferent to the circumstances.
(J) I’ve been reading his letters lately, and there was no circumstance that was affecting him at all, though circumstantially it was affecting his body, or his freedom, or whatever. But he was in some totally different realm that he was unaffected spiritually by the earthly circumstance.
(M) Your choice to God leads to His challenge for another choice, and when you make that choice He comes back, and oh it’s just endless. Because I had said to Him, I want to live fully in the unseen realm. I want to live not believing in this world’s reality as the ultimate reality. That’s what I want Lord. So then He presents me with the parable later. Then He gives me the faith that I have chosen. So it’s just incredible how one small choice leads to God’s response. If we just could see it. There’s a chain, it’s a chain of events, a chain of choices. It’s I respond to Him, and He responds to me, and it keeps going to the ‘nth’ degree, to the glory. But the point I want to make in this podcast, is the issue of desire. That God doesn’t respond to our rote decisions. A choice is not something you make logically ever. You don’t choose from your head; you choose from your heart. And no choice that isn’t from the heart is valid anyway. It has to be a heart-choice, before God considers it a choice. So we really choose what we want. We choose only out of what we want, and what we desire.
